Tail Risk Hedging: Detailed pitch to reset downside protection on the S&P 500 via a defined-risk put spread, targeting an efficient cost (~0.8%) with ~11:1 payoff potential.
Market Outlook: Internals remain fragile with private credit stress, systematic flow triggers, and weak mega-cap leadership; a bounce is possible but uncertainty argues for continued hedges.
Oil: Strait of Hormuz insurance bottlenecks could drive sharp volatility; suggested expression is bull call spreads to capture upside while controlling risk.
Gold: Long-term bullish fundamentals but risk of liquidity-driven selling; a cashless collar is advocated to stay long while hedging left-tail risk during consolidation.
Uranium: Structural case remains “uber bullish” amid nuclear renaissance; near-term risk-off could create a buy-the-dip toward the 200-day MA, with flows and breakout signals key.
Dollar & Rates: DXY at the top of its range with possible risk-off breakout, yet not a fundamentally new bull; oil-driven inflation jitters push yields up as the Fed likely waits and sees.
Companies/Tickers: No specific single-stock tickers were promoted; the focus was on index options and commodity exposures for portfolio protection and convexity.
Transcript
Now back to your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick [music] Serzna. Listeners, we'll keep bringing you a second guest as conditions warrant it until the Iran situation eventually settles down. Meanwhile, thanks for your understanding that we didn't think of this last week. You'll find a download link for this week's trade of the week in your research roundup email. If you don't have a research roundup email yet, it means that you have not yet registered at macrovoices.com. Just go to our homepage and look for the red button over Jim Biano's picture saying looking for the downloads. Patrick, thank you for agreeing to offer our listeners a free tail risk hedging webinar. We'll come back to that soon enough, but first let's start with this week's trade of the week. I know you wanted to walk through one of the types of portfolio hedges that you plan to go deeper on in that webinar. So, how are you thinking about protecting downside risk in the current market environment, Eric? While the market is beginning to show some signs of classic short-term capitulation signals, the underlying conditions in the market remain fragile. Beneath the surface, there's still structural stresses building, particularly in private credit where redemption pressures continue to surface and in the systematic space where several flow triggers are now being hit, potentially shifting positioning in a way that can amplify volatility. At the same time, leadership in the largest mega cap stocks remain structurally weak, removing an important pillar of support for the broader index. So even if the market manages a near-term bounce, the environment still carries enough uncertainty that maintaining left tail protection remains prudent. Interestingly, a similar idea was highlighted earlier this week by Goldman Sachs derivatives trader Brian Garrett, who suggested that investors used the recent bounce to reset downside hedges on the S&P 500. his desk specifically pointed to a 9585 downside put spread as an efficient way to express that view. So if we take that framework and apply it to today's markets, let's walk through exactly what the hedge would look like in practice. With the S&P 500 trading around 6760, the 9585 structure translates into buying the April 17th 6425 put and selling the April 17th 5750 put, which costs a net of 56 points. Put differently, that's roughly 80 basis points of the index value to own this protection structure. And with roughly 5 weeks or about 38 days until expiration, that cost buys you a 675 point wide downside payoff window. If the market were to experience a meaningful draw down during that window, the spread can be worth as much as 619 points, which creates roughly 11:1 payoff profile relative to the premium paid. So the idea here is straightforward. In a market where hedges were recently unwound and volatility could easily reexpand, paying a small percentage of portfolio value for a defined period of downside convexity is a reasonable way to reset protection and manage left tail risk. Well, Patrick, I think this is really topical considering Anis's view that the market may be breathing a sigh of relief prematurely. So, what's the plan for the free webinar that you agreed to offer our Macrovoices listeners? In the webinar, I'm going to go much deeper into exactly these kinds of portfolio protection strategies. We'll walk through the key risks I think could drive a deeper pullback from here, why simply moving to cash isn't always the best solution, and how option hedges can help protect a portfolio while staying invested. I'll also break down a real hedge structure I'm watching right now, including the strikes and expiration and show you how it fits into a broader portfolio protection framework for uncertain markets. The reason we're doing this as a live webinar is that I can actually build these trades visually in the options chain in real time which makes them much easier to understand than trying to explain these structures in this audio only format. So for those that want to attend, we'll be hosting it on March 16th at 400 p.m. Eastern and macrovoice listeners can register for free at bigpicturetrading.com. Patrick, every Monday at Bigpicture Trading, your webinar explains how retail investors can put on our most recent trade of the week. For those listeners that want to explore how to put on these trades in greater detail, don't miss out on a 14-day free trial at bigpicturetrading.com. Now, let's dive into the postgame chart deck. >> All right, Eric, let's dive into these equity markets. What are you thinking here, >> Patrick? Let's revisit the wartime playbook that I described last week. First comes the panic. Oh my gosh, there's a war on. Check. We traded below the 200 day moving average during the Sunday night market panic right after the futures open. Next came the sigh of relief. President Trump says the war is ending. Back up almost 250 S&P points on cheers that the war is over. Oops, wait a minute. As Dr. Anna has explained, it's not over till it's over. And as of Wednesday afternoon, the market was figuring that out. Bigger picture, we're still in the panic phase that I described last week, which is coming in waves. Do we get to a new lower low? Probably depends on what happens with the oil market situation. Uh definitely heed Annis' advice on that one. So, it's not clear whether the bottom is in yet. There's plenty of room for more panic if the market scare is not yet over. If oil prices really did go super high shortterm, and that's definitely possible if the I shouldn't say the straight remains closed. the straight is open. If the insurance companies remain uh inclined to block traffic from being allowed to transit the straight, which has been open the whole time, uh well, you know, if the oil doesn't flow, anything could happen. We could easily see $250 oil prices that would definitely tank global equities in a 2008 style of crash. The thing is, I don't think that that's going to happen. There's no reason that they can't just fix this insurance problem and get the Hormuz traffic back to normal. Once the market stabilizes, I think we'll probably get into that aha moment where people say, "Oh, wait a minute." And wars are inflationary, it's usually good news for equity markets, even if it's bad news for humanity. And that's when the rally kicks in, the serious rally that takes us back up potentially even to all-time highs. We're not there yet, and we don't know if we're going to get there. It depends on how this thing unfolds. But I do still think that's possible if the governments and other parties are swift in getting this insurance situation worked out and the traffic back to flowing efficiently through the straight of Hormuz. Well, Eric, this is the way I'm sizing this up. The first thing I want listeners to do is ask themselves a question as to what they believe the actual driver is of the current equity weakness. We have seen a substantial deterioration in financial conditions from uh breakdowns in the financial stocks to uh breakdown in many of the tech names. The MAG7s continued to lag. Uh we are seeing now that systematic traders trigger levels are now being hit and so there's a lot of underpinning issues in the market including the private equity space. So the question is is that is the market deteriorating because of these types of conditions or is it a focal point on what's happening with the war and the impact of oil prices rising? Now I obviously both of them influence I don't want to say one is more important than the other but in the end if the resolution to the Iran situation deescalated would that solve all of the other problems and would the stock market be able to just go higher? Overall, I think that there's a lot of problems for the markets here. And while we hit some very shortterm over uh sold conditions that warranted it a bounce overall, the new trend is actually down, there is zero evidence that the bulls have actually regain their footing. Overall, you know, if we rallied back up to the highs, I would have to accept that there is some sort of uh neutralizing of the downtrend and potentially a bull um breakout setting up. But as of this moment, the downside window is open for me and we could easily see a 10 plus% market drop um from peak to trough before this is all over. So Eric, let's move on. What's your thoughts here on the US dollar? Well, we're back to 99 a half on the Dixie testing top of trading range resistance. This is definitely war driven. It can definitely go higher on more instability that could ignite a short squeeze and a trend following uh continuation rally and you know a whole bunch of things could happen. But I return ultimately to the fundamental question that I posed last week. Is all of this really dollar bullish or are we seeing more and more fundamental moves that will actually incentivize more central banks to divest dollar commitment and move to other assets. I think that what we're seeing here is just a reaction to the liquidity panic. I don't think it's a structural or fundamental driven new bull market in the dollar. So, I see plenty of room for a downside reversal in the Dixie, but not until this is over. And as Anna said, it ain't over till it's over. Well, under normal conditions, we're in a six-month trade range on the dollar, and we've just traded to the top end of this range. And so, the idea that overhead resistance on the dollar could uh structurally be a headwind uh is possible. And the fact that dollar weakens back to its previous lows is also on the table. But what I'm thinking about right now is whether or not there's a bigger intermarket flow issue from a uh in a riskoff period where the dollar is being bid. And if we see that that uh is able to break out of this six-month trade range to the upside, that could certainly pivot flows with no real fundamental reason behind it, driving even a two or three point rise up to 102 or 103 on the Dixie. Overall, um, if the entire intermarkets remain riskoff and under a lot of stress, I'm not ruling out a dollar breakout here, but I think it's not going to do it on its own. It's going to be a bigger market story. All right, Eric, touching on oil. Well, we covered most of the oil market with honest. There's not a whole lot left to say. The one thing that I've been dwelling on ever since recording that interview, which now for me is uh several hours ago with Dr. honest is his comment about wait a minute this was not a hard problem to solve. If the US had really wanted to solve this insurance problem it shouldn't have taken this long. So what's really going on here? Is somebody not in a hurry on purpose in order to fix this and get the oil flowing? And if so, how long are they going to continue to want to take their time about fixing it? Because this doesn't really add up here. Maybe it's incompetence. Uh maybe there's more to it. I don't know. But let's see if it's not resolved in the next few days. It clearly could have been. So if not, why not? What's going on? That's the question on my mind. Well, you're right, Eric. And us did cover a lot. Overall, it's very hard to do technical analysis on something that is moving with this kind of velocity. Overall, the dip was bought at fib zones. And so, the idea here that oil can still surge higher is something you can't rule out. Overall, it's uh one of these scenarios where the best way to put on trades at this stage is using some sort of option structures. There's a a fat right tail. Bull call spreads can usually give you pretty good payoff structures. So, if you're playing further upside on oil here, uh using uh bull call spreads is a very attractive way of approaching this. All right, Eric, let's touch on gold. Clearly, we're seeing a decoupling from the normal, you know, geopolitical upset means gold goes straight up. That seems to have run out of steam for whatever reason. The downside risk here, though, is not that fundamentals have changed. I don't think that they have. I still think the fundamentals are super bullish long-term for gold. The issue is what happens if everybody else starts selling their gold in order to meet margin calls on other things. And that goes back to the it's not over till it's over. In 2008, and just as a caveat, I'm not expecting a 2008 outcome. But in 2008, even though the gold fundamentals were very bullish, ultimately, what we saw was a huge sell-off in gold. Why? Because people sell what they can, not what they want to when a market is crashing. So the cashless collar strategy that Patrick did a trade of the week on a few weeks ago it to stay long on gold while still hedging against left tail risk with a cashless collar not costing you anything other than limiting some upside. That strategy is still more relevant today probably than the day that it was aired. So go back and listen to that one again if you want to understand how to put that risk collar on. >> Well Eric, for me gold is stuck in a little bit of a tugof-war. one side you have geopolitics, but on the other side you have a flows issue that we had a blowoff top in January and we're in the midst of some sort of a consolidation. Overall, I'm structurally bullish on gold, but it wouldn't surprise me if gold continued to churn in a trade range uh into the second quarter and only after the overbought condition is fully unwound does the opportunity for a new breakout play out. Overall, uh I think that the lows that were put in near 4,500 are likely to remain the lows unless there's a liquidity event uh where all asset correlation goes to one and gold has a little flush out. But uh I'm not signing a high probability to that overall. I think 4500 will uh ultimately prove to have been the low for this first quarter and so it's just a ma matter of seeing when this consolidation is over and when a new bull phase has resumed. All right, Eric, what are your thoughts here on uranium? Patrick, the fundamentals are still uber bullish and they're getting better by the day. We see more and more nuclear announcements and in some ways this oil crisis is underscoring for a lot of investors and other people, hey boy, we really do need this nuclear renaissance. Look, it's gotten to the point where even Ursula Vanderlayan gets it now. So, I think long-term the fundamentals are still super bullish, but hold on. If the market broadly is going to continue selling off, which it may as uh the situation's not over till it's over, it will probably take uranium back down with it. We didn't quite get all the way down to the 200 day moving average on some of my uranium charts. I think there's plenty of room to get there. It's probably a buy when we do get there. Uh it so far uranium's been holding up better than the broader market, but if we get a big broad market risk event and especially if we get a big gold selloff because of that, it'll probably pull uranium with it. Frankly, I'm kind of hoping that happens because it's going to be a buy the dip opportunity. The question is always on a buy the dip is how low is the low where you want to start buying? I'm not exactly sure, but I think there's room to go lower than we are now. Well, whether or not the fundamentals are bullish, overall right now, there is no money flow going into the uranium space, at least from uh the spat physical securities. Overall, I do think that there's obviously all the bullish opportunities, but we're going to be looking for a technical breakout to suggest that flows have started to come back into the space, and it's a a here and now story. Overall, this consolidation continues to dominate at least on this short term. Patrick, before we wrap up this week's show, let's hit that 10-year Treasury note chart. Eric, clearly the oil spike has created nervousness about inflation fears, and that is reflecting in these rates. Now, while we did hear a great uh take from Jim Biano, the one thing I continue to think about is will the Fed respond to supply side inflation because this is not really monetary inflation. And so it's entirely possible that this would result more in a Fed that is a wait and see more than a Fed that becomes hawkish. Nonetheless, uh we'll uh see how it shapes up in the weeks to come, especially since we have the FOMC meeting next week. Folks, if you enjoy Patrick's chart decks, you can get them every single day of the week with a free trial of Big Picture Trading. The details are on the last pages of the slide deck or just go to bigpicturetrading.com. Patrick, tell them what they can expect to find in this week's research roundup. So, in this week's research roundup, you're going to find the transcript for today's interview, as well as the trade of the week chart book, which is discussed here in the postgame, including the link uh to the special webinar we're hosting on hedging your portfolio, which we're hosting on March 16th on Monday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. And you can register at bigpicturetrading.com or click on the link in your research roundup email. We also included a number of links to articles that we found interesting. So, you're going to find this and so much more in this week's research round it. That does it for this week's episode. We appreciate all the feedback and support we get from our listeners, and we're always looking for suggestions on how we can make the program even better. Now, for those of our listeners that write or blog about the markets and would like to share that content with our listeners, send us an email at researchroundup@macrovoice.com and we will consider it for our weekly distributions. If you have not already, follow our main account on X, macrovoices for the most recent updates and releases. You can also follow Eric onx, Eric S. Townson. That's Eric spelled with a K. You can also follow me at Patrick Serzna. On behalf of Eric Townson and myself, thank you for listening and we'll see you all next week. That concludes this edition of Macrovoices. Be sure to tune in each week to hear feature interviews with the brightest minds in finance and macroeconomics. Macrovoices [music] is made possible by sponsorship from bigpicturetrading.com. 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Trade of The Week – MacroVoices #523
Summary
Transcript
Now back to your hosts, Eric Townsend and Patrick [music] Serzna. Listeners, we'll keep bringing you a second guest as conditions warrant it until the Iran situation eventually settles down. Meanwhile, thanks for your understanding that we didn't think of this last week. You'll find a download link for this week's trade of the week in your research roundup email. If you don't have a research roundup email yet, it means that you have not yet registered at macrovoices.com. Just go to our homepage and look for the red button over Jim Biano's picture saying looking for the downloads. Patrick, thank you for agreeing to offer our listeners a free tail risk hedging webinar. We'll come back to that soon enough, but first let's start with this week's trade of the week. I know you wanted to walk through one of the types of portfolio hedges that you plan to go deeper on in that webinar. So, how are you thinking about protecting downside risk in the current market environment, Eric? While the market is beginning to show some signs of classic short-term capitulation signals, the underlying conditions in the market remain fragile. Beneath the surface, there's still structural stresses building, particularly in private credit where redemption pressures continue to surface and in the systematic space where several flow triggers are now being hit, potentially shifting positioning in a way that can amplify volatility. At the same time, leadership in the largest mega cap stocks remain structurally weak, removing an important pillar of support for the broader index. So even if the market manages a near-term bounce, the environment still carries enough uncertainty that maintaining left tail protection remains prudent. Interestingly, a similar idea was highlighted earlier this week by Goldman Sachs derivatives trader Brian Garrett, who suggested that investors used the recent bounce to reset downside hedges on the S&P 500. his desk specifically pointed to a 9585 downside put spread as an efficient way to express that view. So if we take that framework and apply it to today's markets, let's walk through exactly what the hedge would look like in practice. With the S&P 500 trading around 6760, the 9585 structure translates into buying the April 17th 6425 put and selling the April 17th 5750 put, which costs a net of 56 points. Put differently, that's roughly 80 basis points of the index value to own this protection structure. And with roughly 5 weeks or about 38 days until expiration, that cost buys you a 675 point wide downside payoff window. If the market were to experience a meaningful draw down during that window, the spread can be worth as much as 619 points, which creates roughly 11:1 payoff profile relative to the premium paid. So the idea here is straightforward. In a market where hedges were recently unwound and volatility could easily reexpand, paying a small percentage of portfolio value for a defined period of downside convexity is a reasonable way to reset protection and manage left tail risk. Well, Patrick, I think this is really topical considering Anis's view that the market may be breathing a sigh of relief prematurely. So, what's the plan for the free webinar that you agreed to offer our Macrovoices listeners? In the webinar, I'm going to go much deeper into exactly these kinds of portfolio protection strategies. We'll walk through the key risks I think could drive a deeper pullback from here, why simply moving to cash isn't always the best solution, and how option hedges can help protect a portfolio while staying invested. I'll also break down a real hedge structure I'm watching right now, including the strikes and expiration and show you how it fits into a broader portfolio protection framework for uncertain markets. The reason we're doing this as a live webinar is that I can actually build these trades visually in the options chain in real time which makes them much easier to understand than trying to explain these structures in this audio only format. So for those that want to attend, we'll be hosting it on March 16th at 400 p.m. Eastern and macrovoice listeners can register for free at bigpicturetrading.com. Patrick, every Monday at Bigpicture Trading, your webinar explains how retail investors can put on our most recent trade of the week. For those listeners that want to explore how to put on these trades in greater detail, don't miss out on a 14-day free trial at bigpicturetrading.com. Now, let's dive into the postgame chart deck. >> All right, Eric, let's dive into these equity markets. What are you thinking here, >> Patrick? Let's revisit the wartime playbook that I described last week. First comes the panic. Oh my gosh, there's a war on. Check. We traded below the 200 day moving average during the Sunday night market panic right after the futures open. Next came the sigh of relief. President Trump says the war is ending. Back up almost 250 S&P points on cheers that the war is over. Oops, wait a minute. As Dr. Anna has explained, it's not over till it's over. And as of Wednesday afternoon, the market was figuring that out. Bigger picture, we're still in the panic phase that I described last week, which is coming in waves. Do we get to a new lower low? Probably depends on what happens with the oil market situation. Uh definitely heed Annis' advice on that one. So, it's not clear whether the bottom is in yet. There's plenty of room for more panic if the market scare is not yet over. If oil prices really did go super high shortterm, and that's definitely possible if the I shouldn't say the straight remains closed. the straight is open. If the insurance companies remain uh inclined to block traffic from being allowed to transit the straight, which has been open the whole time, uh well, you know, if the oil doesn't flow, anything could happen. We could easily see $250 oil prices that would definitely tank global equities in a 2008 style of crash. The thing is, I don't think that that's going to happen. There's no reason that they can't just fix this insurance problem and get the Hormuz traffic back to normal. Once the market stabilizes, I think we'll probably get into that aha moment where people say, "Oh, wait a minute." And wars are inflationary, it's usually good news for equity markets, even if it's bad news for humanity. And that's when the rally kicks in, the serious rally that takes us back up potentially even to all-time highs. We're not there yet, and we don't know if we're going to get there. It depends on how this thing unfolds. But I do still think that's possible if the governments and other parties are swift in getting this insurance situation worked out and the traffic back to flowing efficiently through the straight of Hormuz. Well, Eric, this is the way I'm sizing this up. The first thing I want listeners to do is ask themselves a question as to what they believe the actual driver is of the current equity weakness. We have seen a substantial deterioration in financial conditions from uh breakdowns in the financial stocks to uh breakdown in many of the tech names. The MAG7s continued to lag. Uh we are seeing now that systematic traders trigger levels are now being hit and so there's a lot of underpinning issues in the market including the private equity space. So the question is is that is the market deteriorating because of these types of conditions or is it a focal point on what's happening with the war and the impact of oil prices rising? Now I obviously both of them influence I don't want to say one is more important than the other but in the end if the resolution to the Iran situation deescalated would that solve all of the other problems and would the stock market be able to just go higher? Overall, I think that there's a lot of problems for the markets here. And while we hit some very shortterm over uh sold conditions that warranted it a bounce overall, the new trend is actually down, there is zero evidence that the bulls have actually regain their footing. Overall, you know, if we rallied back up to the highs, I would have to accept that there is some sort of uh neutralizing of the downtrend and potentially a bull um breakout setting up. But as of this moment, the downside window is open for me and we could easily see a 10 plus% market drop um from peak to trough before this is all over. So Eric, let's move on. What's your thoughts here on the US dollar? Well, we're back to 99 a half on the Dixie testing top of trading range resistance. This is definitely war driven. It can definitely go higher on more instability that could ignite a short squeeze and a trend following uh continuation rally and you know a whole bunch of things could happen. But I return ultimately to the fundamental question that I posed last week. Is all of this really dollar bullish or are we seeing more and more fundamental moves that will actually incentivize more central banks to divest dollar commitment and move to other assets. I think that what we're seeing here is just a reaction to the liquidity panic. I don't think it's a structural or fundamental driven new bull market in the dollar. So, I see plenty of room for a downside reversal in the Dixie, but not until this is over. And as Anna said, it ain't over till it's over. Well, under normal conditions, we're in a six-month trade range on the dollar, and we've just traded to the top end of this range. And so, the idea that overhead resistance on the dollar could uh structurally be a headwind uh is possible. And the fact that dollar weakens back to its previous lows is also on the table. But what I'm thinking about right now is whether or not there's a bigger intermarket flow issue from a uh in a riskoff period where the dollar is being bid. And if we see that that uh is able to break out of this six-month trade range to the upside, that could certainly pivot flows with no real fundamental reason behind it, driving even a two or three point rise up to 102 or 103 on the Dixie. Overall, um, if the entire intermarkets remain riskoff and under a lot of stress, I'm not ruling out a dollar breakout here, but I think it's not going to do it on its own. It's going to be a bigger market story. All right, Eric, touching on oil. Well, we covered most of the oil market with honest. There's not a whole lot left to say. The one thing that I've been dwelling on ever since recording that interview, which now for me is uh several hours ago with Dr. honest is his comment about wait a minute this was not a hard problem to solve. If the US had really wanted to solve this insurance problem it shouldn't have taken this long. So what's really going on here? Is somebody not in a hurry on purpose in order to fix this and get the oil flowing? And if so, how long are they going to continue to want to take their time about fixing it? Because this doesn't really add up here. Maybe it's incompetence. Uh maybe there's more to it. I don't know. But let's see if it's not resolved in the next few days. It clearly could have been. So if not, why not? What's going on? That's the question on my mind. Well, you're right, Eric. And us did cover a lot. Overall, it's very hard to do technical analysis on something that is moving with this kind of velocity. Overall, the dip was bought at fib zones. And so, the idea here that oil can still surge higher is something you can't rule out. Overall, it's uh one of these scenarios where the best way to put on trades at this stage is using some sort of option structures. There's a a fat right tail. Bull call spreads can usually give you pretty good payoff structures. So, if you're playing further upside on oil here, uh using uh bull call spreads is a very attractive way of approaching this. All right, Eric, let's touch on gold. Clearly, we're seeing a decoupling from the normal, you know, geopolitical upset means gold goes straight up. That seems to have run out of steam for whatever reason. The downside risk here, though, is not that fundamentals have changed. I don't think that they have. I still think the fundamentals are super bullish long-term for gold. The issue is what happens if everybody else starts selling their gold in order to meet margin calls on other things. And that goes back to the it's not over till it's over. In 2008, and just as a caveat, I'm not expecting a 2008 outcome. But in 2008, even though the gold fundamentals were very bullish, ultimately, what we saw was a huge sell-off in gold. Why? Because people sell what they can, not what they want to when a market is crashing. So the cashless collar strategy that Patrick did a trade of the week on a few weeks ago it to stay long on gold while still hedging against left tail risk with a cashless collar not costing you anything other than limiting some upside. That strategy is still more relevant today probably than the day that it was aired. So go back and listen to that one again if you want to understand how to put that risk collar on. >> Well Eric, for me gold is stuck in a little bit of a tugof-war. one side you have geopolitics, but on the other side you have a flows issue that we had a blowoff top in January and we're in the midst of some sort of a consolidation. Overall, I'm structurally bullish on gold, but it wouldn't surprise me if gold continued to churn in a trade range uh into the second quarter and only after the overbought condition is fully unwound does the opportunity for a new breakout play out. Overall, uh I think that the lows that were put in near 4,500 are likely to remain the lows unless there's a liquidity event uh where all asset correlation goes to one and gold has a little flush out. But uh I'm not signing a high probability to that overall. I think 4500 will uh ultimately prove to have been the low for this first quarter and so it's just a ma matter of seeing when this consolidation is over and when a new bull phase has resumed. All right, Eric, what are your thoughts here on uranium? Patrick, the fundamentals are still uber bullish and they're getting better by the day. We see more and more nuclear announcements and in some ways this oil crisis is underscoring for a lot of investors and other people, hey boy, we really do need this nuclear renaissance. Look, it's gotten to the point where even Ursula Vanderlayan gets it now. So, I think long-term the fundamentals are still super bullish, but hold on. If the market broadly is going to continue selling off, which it may as uh the situation's not over till it's over, it will probably take uranium back down with it. We didn't quite get all the way down to the 200 day moving average on some of my uranium charts. I think there's plenty of room to get there. It's probably a buy when we do get there. Uh it so far uranium's been holding up better than the broader market, but if we get a big broad market risk event and especially if we get a big gold selloff because of that, it'll probably pull uranium with it. Frankly, I'm kind of hoping that happens because it's going to be a buy the dip opportunity. The question is always on a buy the dip is how low is the low where you want to start buying? I'm not exactly sure, but I think there's room to go lower than we are now. Well, whether or not the fundamentals are bullish, overall right now, there is no money flow going into the uranium space, at least from uh the spat physical securities. Overall, I do think that there's obviously all the bullish opportunities, but we're going to be looking for a technical breakout to suggest that flows have started to come back into the space, and it's a a here and now story. Overall, this consolidation continues to dominate at least on this short term. Patrick, before we wrap up this week's show, let's hit that 10-year Treasury note chart. Eric, clearly the oil spike has created nervousness about inflation fears, and that is reflecting in these rates. Now, while we did hear a great uh take from Jim Biano, the one thing I continue to think about is will the Fed respond to supply side inflation because this is not really monetary inflation. And so it's entirely possible that this would result more in a Fed that is a wait and see more than a Fed that becomes hawkish. Nonetheless, uh we'll uh see how it shapes up in the weeks to come, especially since we have the FOMC meeting next week. Folks, if you enjoy Patrick's chart decks, you can get them every single day of the week with a free trial of Big Picture Trading. The details are on the last pages of the slide deck or just go to bigpicturetrading.com. Patrick, tell them what they can expect to find in this week's research roundup. So, in this week's research roundup, you're going to find the transcript for today's interview, as well as the trade of the week chart book, which is discussed here in the postgame, including the link uh to the special webinar we're hosting on hedging your portfolio, which we're hosting on March 16th on Monday at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time. And you can register at bigpicturetrading.com or click on the link in your research roundup email. We also included a number of links to articles that we found interesting. So, you're going to find this and so much more in this week's research round it. That does it for this week's episode. 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